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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

I have loved the Supreme Court for a long time. My childhood hero was Sandra Day O'Connor and my cat is named after Thurgood Marshall. One of the highlights of my senior year was meeting Justice Sam Alito (whom I don't even like, but it was still thrilling). So, yeah, I'm excited for the hearing.

High recommendation from conservative folks:

“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, an activist group. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

I'm not sure how one is supposed to extricate things that make up your worldview (such as sex, race, and ethnicity) from one's decisions. Is Ms. Long basically proposing that Sotomayor scrub her judicial and personal experience as a Latina woman and subscribe instead to the (white, male) norm?

I'm also encouraged by this:

Mr. Obama telephoned Judge Sotomayor at 9 p.m. on Monday, officials said, advising her that she was his choice to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Later Monday night, Mr. Obama called the three other finalists — Judge Diane P. Wood of Chicago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Solicitor General Elena Kagan — to inform them that he had selected Judge Sotomayor.

All four under consideration were women, meaning that this is not a Harriet Miers situation. Obama - unlike Bush - understands the importance of balancing the highest court of the land and reflecting the diversity of our great nation.

Please note:

All writing here copyright Rachel McCarthy James, 2009-2011 (unless otherwise noted). The views expressed here are solely my own; my writing has nothing to do with any of my employers or associates, former or current.